Skyrim on the 360 has frozen up on me a couple times, but no more than the average 360 game. The game slowed down on me for the first time the other day for about 5 mins, but other than that, I haven't really had any problems. My 360 is about 3 years old and I've put 200+ hours into Skyrim.

Get a PC, mine hasn't locked up yet. It only crashes if I Alt-Tab without pausing first.

On another note, I found out that I won't be able to replay Skyrim on a new character. I tried creating a new one, but then I realized just how much **** I'd have to do again and went back to my Battlemagethiefassassinwarrior.

I've finished the Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild and Imperial Legion story arcs. Now I just need to finish the Companion and Dragonborn arc and then I might go check out the Mage and Bard College arcs. I know the game isn't over - ever - but I'm starting to feel like I can put it down and move on without feeling like I've only played half of it.

Just in time for the new internet and SWTOR as well.

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Please "talk up" if your comprehension white-shifts. I will use simple-happy language-words to help you understand.

Although you got to admit it is amusing that we take so much pride in making our characters look as good as we can in a game where we never see their face unless we pan out and whip the camera in front of them. Even then certain helms hide their face completely.

Joph- If you're on PC, head on over to Skyrim Nexus, get their mod manager, & nab "no more blocky faces" & the "detailed faces" mods.

It'll help. So will the HD textures if your rig is decent.

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"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin

Joph- If you're on PC, head on over to Skyrim Nexus, get their mod manager, & nab "no more blocky faces" & the "detailed faces" mods.

It'll help. So will the HD textures if your rig is decent.

Maybe I'm going blind, but I checked the 'before & after' screenshots on those mods and I could literally not tell the difference. And there's still the matter of ugly design. Dun-/Alt-/Bosmer faces, regardless of mods, lead me to believe that bug-eyed aliens having intercourse with Warcraft goblins is somehow a vital part of The Elder Scrolls lore. *shudder*

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Please "talk up" if your comprehension white-shifts. I will use simple-happy language-words to help you understand.

Joph- If you're on PC, head on over to Skyrim Nexus, get their mod manager, & nab "no more blocky faces" & the "detailed faces" mods.

It'll help. So will the HD textures if your rig is decent.

Maybe I'm going blind, but I checked the 'before & after' screenshots on those mods and I could literally not tell the difference. And there's still the matter of ugly design. Dun-/Alt-/Bosmer faces, regardless of mods, lead me to believe that bug-eyed aliens having intercourse with Warcraft goblins is somehow a vital part of The Elder Scrolls lore. *shudder*

Meh, I made a Bosmer who looks Asian. It was kind of the best I could hope for.

I hit level six and have decided to start over with a spell-centric character. As per my thread once upon a time, I always make heavy melee types and was getting into that mode again in Skyrim. I suppose it's easier when everything is dropping swords and armor instead of robes and spell books.

I know I could just start dumping all my future points into magic skills, etc but it'll be easier for me to break interia with a clean start and I'm not far enough in for it to be painful yet.

Don't over power your spell pool initially is my advice, MP is finite until you start finding items with good MP regen, or cost reduction. (i like MP regen, because swapping sets for every spell you cast sucks.)

I took a few sneak > backstab, One hand Crit, Stamina reduction (benefits conjured swords as well) and one arrow damage mod (all though conjured bow is stupidly strong and I feel I wasted that point.)

Your spells just won't have the damage to MP ratio early on, and you will find yourself having to kite fights for a long time if you are dependent on MP for both survival and damage.

(or you could always just make some op clothes early if you get lucky with disenchants with alchemy/enchanting/smithing and go all out mage pretty easily.)

I found spell casting a bit boring. No matter what gear and spells I got, going heavy armor and just plowing through mobs with a sword in one hand and Flames in the other was a lot faster than pure spell casting.

Not to mention the survivability. When you run out of magicka - which you will, at least early on - being skilled in heavy armor and one-handed weapons makes a huge difference.

Diff'rent strokes, I guess, but the game just feels designed around physical combat. I'm a huge spell casting fan, so I always go spell casting first, but in this particular game, I felt I was being constantly steered towards physical combat.

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Please "talk up" if your comprehension white-shifts. I will use simple-happy language-words to help you understand.

Easy mode in Skyrim is definitely heavy armor + 2 handed weapon. I did a thief and mage type before that, and was shocked at how easy it is to one-hit-kill almost everything up to level 20 with a battleaxe power attack.

My experience was that melee kicks *** at the start, but quickly becomes difficult without drinking potions like a junkie. This only lasted until about lv35 or 40 for me though. Now, I can run around with dual blades, killing almost everything in one or two swings on Master.

For me, I went through Oblivion recently just spam clicking my melee attacks and driving everything into the ground before me.

Basic game play in Skyrim isn't really different so I figured I should try a different character style 'lest I be bored within a couple hours.

Semi-related, since I'm actually looking at mage gear now, I noticed my +50% Magicka regen Novice robes are values at around 155 and the Illusion Robes with +50% Magicka Regen and 12% Illusion bonus are worth about 20. What's up with that zaniness?

Spell casting starts off rough but then you hit that point where you have impact stuns and lots of regen where you can pretty much take out anything. I still need to go back and play my caster more at some point. My thief assassin guy just stole the show as the absolute most fun to play.

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An old silent pond... A frog jumps into the pond, splash! Silence again.

1. How Magicka pools, magicka costs, and gear advance relative to each other. You start hitting some really annoying points where you are going OOM just way too fast, but downgrading your spells is too big a damage loss. It's rectified once you get stronger cost reduction gear, but it's annoying early on.

2. The fact that you have no way to buff your destruction damage. You are essentially going to plateau at 90 damage per spell (though fire can go higher, if the target is on fire, and the other two schools will damage stamina or magicka). I don't remember how strong doublecasting makes it, though. Powerful, sure. But compared to the damage that weapon-based characters can get, even assuming they aren't combining alchemy/smithing/enchanting to ludicrous ends? It just doesn't compare, imo. I really do think that Fortify Destruction should buff its damage.

At level 51, with heavy armor & smithing capped as well as the difficulty cranked to max, the only issues I have as a Greatsword major/bow minor character are against large groups of mages (I'll snipe those) or the "super" dragons that can spawn on account of the dangerous dragons mod (Dragonrend to keep em' grounded, the darkmare tanks them- yay for invincible horses-& I snipe away from way back).

Other than that, I don't even have to block anymore, really. I only touched magic when required for the mage college quests.

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"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin

Running around in the western part of the Skyrim while doing some assassination contracts, I came across a shrine for a Daedra Prince (who is female). Interesting little quest, but the real reward was the... well, the reward.

Got myself a Dawnbreaker, aww yeah! Just a shame its base damage is worse than any of my other swords.

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Please "talk up" if your comprehension white-shifts. I will use simple-happy language-words to help you understand.

If going for a pure caster character, it's infinitely easier if you wear some type of armor (light or heavy) and carry around a solid weapon (probably two-handed). Running out of mana and being unable to summon a bound weapon while trying to avoid being one-shot in your cotton robes gets old really fast.

Once you powerlevel enchanting high enough though, casting is more manageable (but still more difficult than straight hack-n-slash).

Running around in the western part of the Skyrim while doing some assassination contracts, I came across a shrine for a Daedra Prince (who is female). Interesting little quest, but the real reward was the... well, the reward.

Got myself a Dawnbreaker, aww yeah! Just a shame its base damage is worse than any of my other swords.

Take the perk to upgrade magic items and you can raise the base damage quite a bit. That sword is pretty fun on Draugers. Sends them exploding and running in all directions. Which can be kind of messy, but fun.

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An old silent pond... A frog jumps into the pond, splash! Silence again.

If going for a pure caster character, it's infinitely easier if you wear some type of armor (light or heavy) and carry around a solid weapon (probably two-handed).

So the best way to play a wizard is to be a Viking?

Is the power of enchanted goods determined by your enchanting skill level or what? I'm sure the level of soul you provide makes a difference (sure did in Oblivion) but I was wondering how the skill itself figured in and what the value was in potentially generating heaps of cheap magic rings. Soulstones are a finite asset. I don't suppose there's another easily acquired reusable Grand soulstone in Skyrim, huh?

Azura still has her stone in this game. She's on a mountain peak between Ulfric's pad and the mage's college. Less on the case of being "easy" to get though. Without spoiling too much you will have to kill quite a few casters to complete the quest. (on my first character that lead me to quick frustration, haven't been back to try to get it)

I hated soul stone management. I'll handle the casters; I cleared some cave of casters last night including a fight with two mages and a fire daedra-thingie who smeared me a dozen times. Then I ran back to an earlier room, raised a dead mage as a zombie and we went in and cleaned house in thirty seconds. Yay zombies!

Is the power of enchanted goods determined by your enchanting skill level or what? I'm sure the level of soul you provide makes a difference (sure did in Oblivion) but I was wondering how the skill itself figured in and what the value was in potentially generating heaps of cheap magic rings. Soulstones are a finite asset. I don't suppose there's another easily acquired reusable Grand soulstone in Skyrim, huh?

Based on four things: 1. Size of soul 2. Enchanting skill level 3. Perks taken that increase the effect 4. Temporary effects or equipment that boost enchanting

Even using a Grand Soul Gem, sometimes my "enchant ring" enchants would only give a +3% bonus at low levels. Once I had the perks and high enchanting, I think it would be around 20%. Guessing that without the perks, it would be around 10% at high level enchanting (maybe 12% or so).

If going for a pure caster character, it's infinitely easier if you wear some type of armor (light or heavy) and carry around a solid weapon (probably two-handed).

So the best way to play a wizard is to be a Viking?

Battlemage =/= Viking.

In regards to soul gems, they can be bought (and stolen) from all of the court mages in the major holds. The mages will also buy enchanted jewelry, so just use up your filled soul gems to enchant some crap, sell it off, and use the proceeds to buy empty gems.

But thanks for the tip on the rocks. I remember them being scarcer in Oblivion but then I got the Azuria stone and stopped worrying about it. At least now I know I can crank out piles of enchanted crap.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what you'll end up doing if you want to level up Enchanting. It's also the best method to level up Smithing.

In fact, if you grab every Iron Ore/Ingot and animal hide you find, spam Iron Daggers and Hide Bracers, enchant them with low-level enchantments (I think Absorb Health and +Sneak get the best prices, respectively), you can sell them to weapon/armor vendors at a decent profit.

This will also result in gaining several levels though, which will make all of the monsters harder, so practice with caution.

Running around in the western part of the Skyrim while doing some assassination contracts, I came across a shrine for a Daedra Prince (who is female). Interesting little quest, but the real reward was the... well, the reward.

Got myself a Dawnbreaker, aww yeah! Just a shame its base damage is worse than any of my other swords.

Want!

Had some fun rolling around with my "evil" mage yesterday. He's collecting all the Daedric artifacts and generally being a bit of a power-hungry *******. He roams around killing anyone he can't otherwise get something from, and stealing childrens' dreams. 50% of the time he's also faceless, because his Dragon Priest masks doesn't always like to render.

Started him on the Dark Brotherhood quests. When given the option to guess which captive should be killed, I totally incinerated all 3 of them. Best to tie up the loose ends, I figured. I was amused to find that that's totally an option.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what you'll end up doing if you want to level up Enchanting. It's also the best method to level up Smithing.

In fact, if you grab every Iron Ore/Ingot and animal hide you find, spam Iron Daggers and Hide Bracers, enchant them with low-level enchantments (I think Absorb Health and +Sneak get the best prices, respectively), you can sell them to weapon/armor vendors at a decent profit.

This will also result in gaining several levels though, which will make all of the monsters harder, so practice with caution.

Banish.

Holy crap, banish. You make a fortune off even the weakest weapon with the weakest banish enchant. Something like 500 gold on an iron dagger?

Of course, the flip side is that I have yet to find a weapon with a banish enchant to learn yet

Started him on the Dark Brotherhood quests. When given the option to guess which captive should be killed, I totally incinerated all 3 of them. Best to tie up the loose ends, I figured. I was amused to find that that's totally an option.

I did the same thing. Execution style from behind, arrows to the base of the neck.

Edited, Feb 7th 2012 2:17pm by lolgaxe

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George Carlin wrote:

I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.